Chances are that, whichever path you want to follow, someone else has gone before you. If not all the way, but they would have done enough for you to learn from them and then build on it.
The challenge, then, is to seek out those opportunities to learn from those who paved the path for is, and build on it.
One building block at a time. That’s how we make progress, by turning a pile of bricks in something useful.
Of course, it starts with a plan. It helps to have at least a general direction of where we are headed.
The plan makes the hard work take shape and creates shared meaning. It also helps to clarify expectations.
When implementing projects, there is the tendency to focus on deliverables. In this setup, there is the assumption that we know what we are solving for. But in a world were everything is in flux, it is hard to know with certainty what the solution should be.
This requires that our planning is more fluid, our implementation more agile, and that we are open to pivot based on feedback. Surely this introduces additional challenges, as it is hard enough staying on track with a single target. This, however, is the necessary cost to deliver the right project and get the right result, more often than not.
It is too late, it is too big a problem, we tell ourselves. We see the mountain, and we freeze. But there is a lot we can do.
Starting out by being conscious about our environment upon which we depend, then making choices where we have control, and connecting with communities who are already on the journey, we’ll learn and expand our circle of control.
For while each of us, is a drop in the ocean, the ocean is a collection of all the drops.
Many years ago, I learned of the signal to noise ratio. It states that there is always noise, and you should design your system in a way that the noise does not interfere with the message you are sending.
While this may make it sound as if noise is a bad thing, to be cancelled out of the system, it may not always be the case. For what is noise anyway? It is just everything else you don’t want at the moment.
Maybe not today, but there might be another signal among the noise of today that could be pointing to the future. We must then, not only focus on getting our message across now, but getting the message from the noise as well.
Random Walks 